1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to pasta making and more particularly to methods and devices for cutting long pasta ribbons to uniform lengths.
2. Prior Art
Pasta is produced in a wide variety of shapes. A popular subgroup of shapes is referred to as long goods and consists of pasta paste extruded in a long ribbon. One particular style of long goods are relatively wide pasta such as lasagna.
A common method of manufacturing relatively wide elongated pasta long goods includes the extrusion of a paste ribbon through an elongated die, and thereafter draping the ribbon over a drying rod providing a double ribbon strip with one length of ribbon depending from each side of the drying stick. After trimming the double strips to length, the pasta is transported on the drying stick to a drying area. After prolonged drying at controlled temperature and humidity, the strips are then cut to the desired individual product length. Since the dried pasta is extremely hard while at the same time being brittle, difficulty has been encountered in cutting the strips to uniform lengths for subsequent packaging. It has been known to use saws, both of the circular and band type, as well as other cutting tools. It has been found that due to the abrasive nature of the dried pasta that saws are subjected to extreme wear and early dulling. Additionally, saws have been found to provide somewhat ragged edges in the area of the cut since the brittleness of the pasta tends to cause fragmentation of the area adjacent the saw kerf.
It would therefore be an advance in the art to provide an improved method of forming uniform lengths of wide pasta which did not require the use of cutting tools on the dried strip.